Scott Stinson: Ontario taxpayers plowing another $175 million into horse racing. When will it end?

A race at Woodbine Racetrack in Toronto. Going to the horse races was once the only way to attend a sporting event while putting some money on it, but now that can be done at any sporting event. Photo by Michael Burns/Toronto Sun/Postmedia/File

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The Ontario government has recently finalized details of a $175-million boost to an industry that, such an investment suggests, it sees as a key driver of economic growth and jobs.

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Artificial intelligence? Critical minerals?

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Nope: horse racing.

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The quaint pastime, for decades the only way to legally wager on sports in Ontario, has been struggling, now that it is very much not the only way to legally wager on sports in the province. Key metrics are down, and costs are up.

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And so, the Doug Ford government has done what the Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne governments did before him: Handed over a giant sack of cash to the horse racing industry and tried to buy it some more time as it figures out how to stay relevant in a world where all that is needed to legally gamble on sports is an internet connection.

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Ontario taxpayers are giving $35 million a year for the next five years, in addition to the up to $120-million annually that was already earmarked for the horse racing industry, to help it avoid collapse. The supplementary money has been in the works for months but was not formally approved until late June, after industry players agreed upon the distribution of the spoils.

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It is a lot of money. That $35 million annual boost is more than the cost of one used Bombardier jet, the purchase of which sent the Ford government into a public-relations tailspin and caused the plane’s hasty resale. The cash injection also comes at a time when the province has cut post-secondary education grants, has chronic health-care funding problems, and is in negotiations with teachers unions over new contracts.

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So how does horse racing, a niche industry if ever there was one, qualify for such an enthusiastic investment? The short answer is that it knows the right people. And it is very good at sounding the alarm.

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Ontario’s financial backstopping of horse racing goes back to the late 1990s, when the introduction of legalized casino gambling in the Mike Harris era threw it into crisis. Threatened by flashy new competitors in the business of convincing the public to wager (and, more often than not, lose) money, the horse racing industry convinced the government of the day to share a portion of casino revenues with it.

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Racetracks around the province, from smaller ones in places like Sarnia and the Kawarthas to the much larger one at Woodbine, promptly put slot machines on the premises and kept a slice of the proceeds. The Slots at Racetracks program was so successful that it was eventually pumping almost $350 million annually into the horse racing industry.

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It was, in fact, too successful. The McGuinty government, facing a budget crunch in its waning days almost 15 years ago, abruptly cancelled the program, saying that the province could no longer afford to subsidize horse racing at such a scale. There was, not surprisingly, a political angle to the decision: most of Ontario’s 15 racetracks were in rural ridings that were not held by Liberals.